Showing 47 posts tagged apps
Better OmniFocus integration with GMail by Mailplane
The popular Mac OS X desktop client for GoogleMail, Mailplane, has been updated to v2.5.5 and sports a significantly improved integration with OmniFocus now. Get the latest version of Mailplane and download the OmniFocus plug-in.
The plug-in allows you select text within an email and invoke the OmniFocus quick entry, populated with the selected text in the notes field as well as a link back to the email in Mailplane. Read the installation documentation
Using TextExpander and OmniFocus for tracking actions & projects
In this short screencast I am demonstrating how I use TextExpander inside of OmniFocus to track projects, which I have delegated and where I don’t want to track individual actions.
Basically all these projects are tracked as individual entries in a Single Action List called ‘Delegated Projects’ and I use the note field and TextExpander to capture easy to read status updates. I get these updates either through weekly status calls or meetings I have with the project owners or via email.
Whenever I am asked to provide an update myself or meet anyone associated with the project, I can quickly and easily engage on the subject.
I also use TextExpander to capture single Waiting For actions I record during meetings or calls. TextExpander helps me to reduce the time and the typing required to capture these while I still want to follow and remain engaged in the conversation. Querying my Twitter followers that seems to be the most common use case amongst them as well.
Adding files to OmniFocus with Alfred
Another fine piece of OmniFocus extension work by Don Southard allowing you to add the current selected file from Finder to your favourite productivity application via your favourite application launcher Alfred. Check out Don’s blog for more helpful Alfred extensions and OmniFocus hacks.
I am a big Alfred fan and it has replaced LaunchBar for me. Although I am using it for quite a while now, the above free ScreenCastsOnline video tutorial by Don McAllister also taught me a thing or two about Alfred’s PowerPack features.
iPad, iThoughtsHD, iAWriter and iCloud: A relationship made in heaven and kept together by Markdown.
This is a great setup for writers, bloggers and people working on concept since you can mind map and structure things in iThoughtsHD, export it as Markdown straight into iA Writer (on your iPad or Mac) and develop the details.
Seems I need to move from Mindjet iPad back to iThoughts to make this great workflow work for me.
More screencast/video goodness from the recent MacWorld posted by the OmniGroup. This time David Sparks, aka @MacSparky, renown as one of the host of the Mac Power Users Podcast and author of the recently released “Mac at Work” book, shares his awesome tricks for OmniFocus. And he has some great ones!
OmniGroup put the recordings from MacWorld 2011 online. The infamous Merlin Mann of 43 folders fame delivered a great presentation on using perspectives in OmniFocus. Fun and valuable 56 minutes of time spend watching.
Simple Sync of Omnifocus to iCal events
This handy script by Yilei Yang and Mike Erickson allows you to “export” your actions from Omnifocus that have either start or due dates to iCal as events. While Omnifocus allows you to sync your actions as ToDos to iCal, this script adds them as events to a pre-defined calendar which may come in useful when sorting your day by looking at the hard landscape. Yilei’s version simply adds them to a pre-defined calendar while Mike’s version also adds alarms. Note that this no full “sync”, but more of an export: Every time you invoke the script the calendar gets wiped and populated with a fresh export.
I fiddled around quite a bit with my perspectives in OmniFocus and at one point in time I had more than 15 perspectives, which was absolutely useless. Hence I took some time to bring it down to the minimum of perspectives I need. Here they are. I do not use “Flagged” and “Completed”, but they are default perspectives of OmniFocus that you can not delete.
Using simple tools to deal with File Clutter on Mac OS X
Dealing with file clutter remains a challenge for all of us that like to increase their personal productivity and review, filter, sort and file new documents or downloads as effective and efficient as possible, but at the same time make sure we are able to retrieve them in at least the same time.
Sticking with Finder
Personally, I’ve tried many solution to deal with file clutter. I went from “heavy-weight” file management solution like Yojimbo, Together or DevonThink to more “light-weight” ones such as Shovebox. None of them really did the job for me as I’ve either seen to slow performance, have been over oder underwhelmed by the the available features, but most of the time I just missed the Mac OS X Finder, which I think is still the best file management available.
The simple and minimalistic, but efficient solution
Hence I wanted a minimalistic, Finder-based document management approach that complied with the GTD methodology and delivered the greatest possible integration with Mac OS X. Finder was the choice, however, what I missed in Finder, and that was really the only thing I missed, was the ability to tag files. So my solution to deal with file clutter involves Tags from GravityApps to apply tags to all my documents (Tags goes way beyond this, by the way). In addition I was looking to make the entire process as keyboard centric as possible, especially the part where I move the documents in the appropriate folder. LaunchBar, a Quicksilver equivalent, does a great job for me in that respect. Watch my screencast above to get a glimpse of my simple solution in action.
You will also see how I organise my documents and especially dealing with reference material, being the GTDer I am, in the video.
